Kim Frank’s stage comeback
Real singer performs his ex-band’s biggest hits
At the end of the 90s, Kim Frank was considered a big heartthrob.
© imago/BRIGANI-ART
In 2002 the successful German band Echt broke up. Former frontman Kim Frank now provides a lot of nostalgia in two ways.
It has now been over 20 years since the German band Echt, a phenomenon of the 90s, dissolved. The five boys from back then, now all in their 40s, have largely withdrawn from the limelight for almost as long. At least one of them celebrated his stage comeback as a surprise guest in Jan Böhmermann’s “ZDF Magazin Royale”: ex-frontman Kim Frank (41) belted out a medley of his former band’s biggest hits and got the feeling that people still had a lot of love for Echt in them.
At first, Böhmermann acted in the show on Friday evening (November 17th) as if he himself were performing the former chart hits such as “You don’t have any love in you”, “Junimond” or “Weinst du”. But finally the camera panned to Frank, who had personally taken the microphone – accompanied by the Ehrenfeld Radio Dance Orchestra. “Back on TV for the first time in 20 years!” said Böhmermann, happy about the rare TV visit from the musician, who now mostly works behind the camera as a director. As such, he will soon have another gift for all real fans.
Foretaste of the upcoming documentary
Because anyone who felt transported back to the end of the 90s by Kim Frank’s performance can look forward to even more real nostalgia next week. Frank’s three-part documentary “Really – Our Youth” starts on November 23rd in the ARD media library. You can see, among other things, video material that the five band members – Frank, Kai Fischer (43), Andreas “Puffi” Puffpaff (42), Florian “Flo” Sump (42) and Gunnar Astrup (41) – behind the scenes at the time have turned.
Frank put a lot of heart and soul into the creation of the documentary: he viewed and edited a total of 240 hours of material for the trilogy over the course of several years. The ex-frontman also acts as the narrator in the documentary.
He packed everything that moved the band back then into the three-part production: dreams and fears, the first great love, the first scandals and lasting friendships – even after the breakup. Frank says: “I wanted to do something that was as close as possible to how we were back then. And that includes the beautiful, funny, but also painful moments.”